


Desolation, and the Dead May Walk

by Vacant_Ghostgirl



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Apocalypse, F/F, F/M, Jade being a badass, Kids (Homestuck), Road Trip, Sadstuck, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Related Gore, Zombiestuck, zombie fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 18:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vacant_Ghostgirl/pseuds/Vacant_Ghostgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Jade Harley and until a few weeks ago, someone cared. You are not infected. And you plan on getting to where you're going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Bec ran away.

         That’s the worst part about this, you think. There were a lot of people who died on that day, Z-day, the day all mass hell broke lose and then it all got very lonely very fast- there aren’t enough of you out there to have collectively determined a name for the minute, the hour, where everything went really shithive maggots. A lot of people died and a lot of people didn’t stay dead, and that makes you real sad and all, but not as sad as how you felt in that moment when you woke up that day in the canyon in the middle of Oklahoma and your fluffy white friend wasn’t anywhere to be found.  
         You stayed for 2 days, waiting for him to come back. You had yelled his name into the desert until your voice grew hoarse from the thick heat and sand filled air. You kept the handkerchief over your nose and mouth, to prevent the infection, to prevent the dust from filling your lungs and heart and eyes until you grew stone cold like a statue and fell apart. You didn’t find Bec. Or, Bec didn’t bother to find you.  
         That was the first time you cried since this whole thing started. 14 miles outside of Rosston, raiding a convenience store (Potbellied one went down like a boar, black blood sprayed all over the storefront windows, the squelch of your sneakers in the growing puddle on the floor), 4 days after he’d disappeared and you’d broken down like this whole thing happened yesterday. You sat in the candy aisle and the blood seeped between your fingers and you had cried until the south dried up your tears. Your name is Jade Harley and you are stronger than this, that’s why you survived, so you picked yourself up off the tiled floor, wiped the blood on your shorts, tied your hair up and grabbed your shotgun from where you left it on the counter. You came here to get supplies (Gas, food, bottled water, whatever hasn’t been taken already), and that’s what you’re going to do.  
         You take some dog food though, just in case.  
         The highway doesn’t work, sometimes. Out here, in the near wilderness of fuckass nowhere, there aren’t a lot of cars blocking the road- not like there were in Ohio. If there are, you’d usually have Bec sniff the place out from a few hundred feet away, he’d bark if there were any infected still in the vehicles. The dead always smelled like rotting and something awful- but the infected always smelled worse. When the cars do get to be too much though, you have to get out and walk. At night, your shoulders ache from the sunburn and you feel as if you could peel your whole face off, it burns so badly.  
         Luckily, that isn’t the case today. You put on the cheap shades from your last raid, tug your handkerchief tight, and rev up the engine. Your eyes flick over to the map taped to the sun visor in the passenger seat- today’s goal is somewhere on the tip of the panhandle, and thank God because Oklahoma has just been the absolute worst. You’d duct taped that map up there the first week you had started to drive, when you knew for absolute certain where you wanted to end up at the end of this journey. You’re certain that if it weren’t for this map, for a destination, for a goal at the end of each day, you’d have gone crazy by now.  
         You miss Bec. His dog hair still clung to the passenger seat stubbornly, no matter how much you tried to scrape it off with your fingernails. He used to hang his head out the window when you drove, tongue flapping in the wind. After you came to America, Bec was amazed at everything the cities had to offer long after you had grown accustomed to them.  
         You have 3 cassette tapes in this car: The Best of the Beach Boys, the Rushmore Soundtrack (A movie you’ve never seen and probably never will), and one shitty one that always skips out in the middle that has Nicky Manaj’s Superbass recorded on a loop. When you picked up this car a few days ago, you almost shuddered to think of what kind of person had been driving it before you. You don’t really have to worry about that anymore though, seeing as though they’re probably upchucking their brains and dragging themselves through the streets of Tulsa (eyes gone from their sockets, you can still her the scratches at the door in your sleep). For some reason, you are really okay with this.  
         Good vibrations never did do any good for their speakers blown stereo system that this car carried with it, though. You’re fiddling carefully with the knob, trying to get it to a frequency that fits your shattered tastes and doesn’t sound completely abysmal in the speakers, speeding down the highway at a rousing 90 miles per hour in your fantastically shitty 1994 Honda when something in the peripheral of your vision moves.  
         Your hands clench against the steering wheel and you whip your head over to the side (3 months and you’re still this fucking nervous, living out in a jungle for 13 years for Christ’s sake and the scariest thing you’ve yet to encounter on this strange continent is not even in possession of a pulse and you’re still this fucking nervous), craning to see what had created the disturbance. You don’t slow down the car. You speed up.  
         Then, you see it.  
         The Infected, as you’re convinced, will never stop giving you that same indescribable chill that runs up from the base of your spine to the top of your head the moment you set eyes on them, the way your tendons seize up with anxiety and your stomach pools with acid. Even after all you’ve seen, the horror you passed through in Kentucky, the hordes that you’d seen from miles away passing bigger cities, after all this time, their dead blank hungry faces still made dread run through your veins.  
         It stands alone in the desert, a lone walker, struggling across the plane in the blazing heat, half of its face torn off and dragging down to its boney shoulder. For a minute, you take it in, really study it, this one horrible cruel monster that turned your brand new life on to its bare belly ready to be ripped open. And then, you turn away. You put your foot on the gas because you don’t want to watch it drag its own bleeding carcass across what used to be a world you had begun to learn from. You don’t want that, and you never did.  
         Your name is Jade Harley and four days ago, your dog Bec ran away.  
         But you keep driving.


	2. Dave

It wasn’t your idea to join boy scouts.

When you were smaller, you lived with your brother, and a lot of the things that happened to you were not your ideas, nor were they subject to be changed based upon whether or not you wanted them to happen. Your brother was your guardian and sole caretaker; that wasn’t your idea, but it happened. You lived in an apartment in the crap part of Houston. That wasn’t one of yours either, but you remember the day you packed up everything from your old house into boxes, your life in cardboard, your life in a U-Haul van driving away in the rain from a house that still smelled like your family and your home, that happened. 

You don’t know who your dad is: not yours; happened. 

You flunked the seventh grade: not yours; happened. 

You never celebrating your 15th birthday happened. 

Your Mom dying happened. 

Boy scouts happened.

You regret boy scouts. 

Every Saturday Bro would take the 5:54 bus from downtown to the YMCA on Griggs so that he could dump you there for his shift at the 24-hour minimart by the movie theater. You didn’t understand why he didn’t just drop you at the movies, so at least you could spend the time he spent scanning tampons shoving your face with popcorn in an air conditioned theater watching bad summer action movies and cliché romcoms in the dark. Instead, you sat around a gym in khakis and second hand hiking boots getting flicked in the ears by older kids while some middle aged dude whose glory years were spent on his old small town high school football team taught you about… you don’t remember… knots? You’re pretty sure there were like a million different kinds of knots and you sucked at tying all of them. (On a side note, They would have made the championships if they hadn’t gone offside’s in the fourth down of the third quarter, because that was the end of the line for Scoutmaster Paul, who never made it to the big leagues, and sometimes Dave felt bad for him but other times he just felt awkward because some people are just losers. Some people are like Scoutmaster Paul. They’re just losers.) 

You didn’t get bullied because you sucked at knots, but you always kind of figured that was part of it. 

That was where you found yourself that day in June, sitting in the corner of the gymnasium, eyes sliding to the clock at different yet progressively shorter intervals. You were tugging at your shitty ascot and hugging your knees to your chest, counting the minutes before your Bro would show up to get you out of this body odor and adolescent hellhole, and the closer minutes before you’d get caught not pitching tents like the rest of the boys. Fuck tents, man. Fuck inner-city tent building.

What happened was that this kid, Paulie Proctor, had caught this bird that had flown into through the bathroom window and broken its wing in the process of coming into the building. He’d cupped it in his meaty fists and plopped it down in the corner of the gymnasium on to the dirty scuffed floor, just to stare at it. There was a whole group of boys gathered around in a circle, and it made you curious enough to raise your head and pick yourself and wander towards them, peeking over the shoulders of bigger kids, trying to see what all the fuss was about. 

Paulie was yanking at the wing of the bird, and it was crowing something terrible. You can remember the noise crystal clear. It was like every bad dream you’d ever woken from. No one was saying anything- you think back to that moment, you think of how Paulie must have felt, that bird at his fingers, and you’re so glad Paulie Proctor is probably half eaten somewhere in Tulsa with his spleen being torn apart by some rotting prostitute. 

You’d wanted the noise to stop. That was all.

“Hey,” You croaked, because you hadn’t used your voice since you’d mumbled a goodbye to your brother an hour ago. Nobody turned when you spoke. “Hey,” You tried again, and your voice was louder, more confident. Paulie looked up.

“C’mon man,” You’d said, shoving your hands into your pockets and tilting your head. “’S gonna die anyway, just let it be.” The boys around you began to turn. Who was this jerk-off, anyway? What was up with those sunglasses?

“Fuck off, kid.” You’re pretty certain he hadn’t called you by your name, only because he didn’t know it. You probably would have let it be, too, walked off to go burn the next 45 minutes doing something of equal or less value, but the bird makes a noise again like something awful and you go, “Seriously.”

This time, Paulie stops touching the bird. 

“I said fuck off, you little faggot,” And when he stands it’s like you’ve just told the Berlin Wall to suck its own dick. There are an infinite amount of timelines- you've thought about this, a whole lot, examining it up ways and left from Tuesday, but- there are a million ways the next few seconds of your life could have played out, and all of them end with you with a whole medical rainbow of injuries. You're eleven and you have second hand velcro shoes because you still can't get the hang of tying the laces; you versus Paulie Proctor was like pitting a malnourished Guatemalan orphan against a veteran luchador. Only, that isn't what happened. Because Scoutmaster Sleaze has lumbered over to your corner of the gym to see what all of the goddamn fuss is about, and Paulie kind of just steps away from you before the only adult in a five mile radius wearing a bright yellow handkerchief around his neck parts the crowd of prepubescent boys, and sort of

steps forward

and there's this crack that stabs you in the ear, it's not even fair, this timeline

it's the sound of hollow bones being stepped on by an overweight 14 year old boy, and it fucks you up right to your core. Paulie'd stepped on the bird's head. Even in that moment, as you watched it happening, you knew- for as long as you could remember, you would never forget that sound. It's there, forever, and it's been there forever. Its skull is crushed now and its brain is a bloody pulp of a goddamn pancake and leaking out its eye sockets and you can't- look any other place.

It was the first time you saw death, and death stared right back.

 

 

You wake up because something is licking your face.  
   
"Fuck, man, what are you- Jesus, that is a new dimension of nasty," You groan, shoving the panting mass of fur off of you. He barks twice. 

"Okay, okay, I'm awake..." you mumble groggily, running your hand through your hair and blearily looking around the truck for your shades. Here's a few things you didn't anticipate about the panhandle of Oklahoma:

-The heat  
-The dust  
-The goddamn HEAT and DUST

Thank fucking Christ you had the good sense to park in the shadow of the building you're behind, or else you would have ended up awake a whole lot sooner and a whole lot more sunburned. You know you're from Texas and heat hot enough to melt the plastic shit on a jungle-gym should be your forte, but to be honest you were always living it up in your own air conditioned casa, not out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere sleeping in the back of a high jacked pickup truck running from infected. 

Your hand flies to the sword besides you, and you peer out of the ford.

The place is deserted. Yeah, you're pretty classy when it comes to overnight hideouts, and there's nothing spiffier than the back of a dry gas station to hold the fort over while you catch a snooze. Especially after the kind of days you'd been having. You look back at the truck where you're crouching, and stare. Lassie is holding your shades in his slobbery mouth. You groan, and bump your forehead against the side of the pickup. 

Your name is Dave Strider and this damn dog just won't leave you alone. Your shades drop to the truck. 

He barks twice again. 

"Yes, okay Scooby Doo, I can hear you. Here," you say, hitching your jeans up and hopping out of the truck. You yank open the door in the front, and the smell of food that's been baking in the sun greets you like a hot heavy hug of rotting produce. The heat of the space makes you go nauseous, and you grab blindly for one of the cans and stare at the open, once fresh food that sits decaying in the passenger seat before you slam the door shut. Thankfully, it's still early enough so the shadow of the building is leering over the truck. 

You hadn't checked inside the station because you were scared.

You hop back in, and examine the can. 

Ravioli. 

"Fuck," you say, and feel 12 again. The dog wags its tail and states you down as you flip out your pocket knife and stab into the aluminum. He barks at you once more. 

"I'm all out of puppy chow, princess," you bite back, because you're tired of the barking and the heat and the noise is giving you a migraine. 

"Here," you grumble, and slop down some chef Bogarde into his plastic bowl. He sniffs it, and then looks up at you. 

"That shits grade A, and you'd better eat it because if you don't, you're not getting any later. " 

Even when Bro said that to you when you were younger, you never go the logic of it. 

You're used to the quiet while you eat. The dog even eats quiet, like he's been trained to. 

Here's the thing about Marmaduke: he wouldn't even come near you when he first started following you. A lot of that time, you didn't have a car, and it was after you'd been hiding out in Freedom for a few weeks after.

You chewed slowly, and moved past that thought. You're not going to remember that. Not now. Maybe sometime later. 

He'd barked at you forever, you'd sworn. Always around a hundred feet away from you, he'd scared the living shit out of you too, because you'd thought all the dogs had been eaten by the infected. He'd looked pretty worn out, and you'd thought the thing was wild until you saw the collar on it. There wasn't a tag, so you figured you'd just call out names until he'd perk his ears up, then you'd know, that's the right one. 

Called to him. Whistled. Waved food around. Inch by inch, he'd come closer until he'd licked your hand and you'd given him an old can of chili and called it at a wary mans best friend. 

But this was what you noticed over the days: he wasn't skinny. He was dirty, but never to the bone, not all the way into his white fur. You'd found the truck with the key tossed under the mat and he'd hopped in like he had done so his whole life. 

He barked when you passed infected. 

He sat when you said sit. 

He didn't flinch away from your stupid swords.

All the while, you're calling him every dog name that comes to mind, because you know: this is somebody's dog. Someone's been taking care of it. 

Lassie, Goofy, Scooby Doo, you think to yourself as you watch it lick the bottom of the bowl, where the hell did you run from. 

What got you so spooked you'd take off. 

Your train of thoughts is interrupted by a bark. 

"Well aren't we Chatty Cathy today," you say loudly, chucking the empty can out of the truck. You pick up your glasses from the floor and wipe them with the sleeve of your sweatshirt. "Feel like telling me what's got you so worked up or are you just happy to see me?"

Then it barks for real. It barks different. 

"Motherfucker," you hiss, and whirl around, scanning the horizon for anything moving. But, there's nothing there. You look down at the dog pissed as fuck.

"Buddy, if you're trying to up your prankster's gambit by psyching me out, you picked a fucking stupendous time for it. What's gonna happen the next time you bark like that and I don't believe you, huh? The wolf that cried boy. We're gonna get our brains picked apart in our sleep and it's gonna be all your fault." Sparky wags his tail and noses at your pant leg, looking up at you with doe eyes and whimpering.

"Listen, there's nothing out there! It's miles of fuckery and cactuses-"

That's when you the stench hits you like a wrecking ball and you feel your stomach melt into your feet and your hands, burnt red by the Oklahoma sun, go clammy with sweat.

You get it, then, like the real asshole you are. They're not out in the desert. They're coming around the side of the gas station.

"N-" You start to say, but the first one comes dragging itself around the corner where you turn to look like something out of a fucking grind house film. The top of its head looks like it was put through a meat grinder, and even from where you're standing frozen in the truck you can see the maggots wiggling around in the part of the brain that's exposed to the sun. Whatever shirt it may or may not have been wearing when it had been initially infected was gone, and you could see the lesions creeping up its chest to culminate in a pulsing mangled black sore over its heart. It blinks slowly, twice, and then turns its bloated pale head towards you.

Everything starts happening very fast.

You spring to the sword behind you, swallowing the bile that has risen in your throat. Sparky is barking up a hurricane, front paws splayed and ready to attack. The infected makes a scramble over to the side of the truck- out this far from Tulsa, it probably hasn't eaten in weeks and you're not sure if these things have libido when it comes to eating human flesh but this one looks like it wants to tear into you something horrible. It's clawing to climb over the side of the truck and fucking hell, the smell is making your eyes water, it's like someone fell into a KFC grease trap filled with shit and they stayed there for a hundred years. You have to wait a moment, because it leans over and it has to be right where its neck is sticking out, baring its bloody scalp and grey matter at you like a giant stop sign and you lash out madly with one purpose in mind.

The head hits the surface of the truck with a defining wet thump. You take a deep breath through your mouth, backing up to the opposite side of the van because you don't want to touch that thing-

The hand that grabs your shoulder is wet and hot. Your pulse screams in your ears and you yell, whirling around and lashing out blindly with the sword, wrist tilted down out of surprise. It doesn't hit where it should, you cut into the lower part of its abdomen and it falls backwards to the dusty desert ground in what you might even call shock. 

When you lean over the side of the truck, your eyes widen.

Its stomach is distended. For a moment, you pray- maybe it's the heat, or the infection, something you've never seen before- but you know what you're looking at and there's no way around the ooze and blood and little bones that come pouring out of where you'd slashed it. Where you'd slashed her. You'd cut right into a hefty bag of abortion soup and when it looks up at you with teeth bared ready to come climbing back up the side of the truck again now that the extra weight is gone, you don't hesitate when you swing your arm across at her neck.

And then everything is quiet again.

You sit.

It takes 20 minutes before you stop shaking. The corner of where the building turns looks ominous now. You think, if there were any more, they'd have come crawling around to where you were when the other two did. Your lips are cracked and your knuckles are white where you're clutching your sword next to you and you pull your knees up to your chest and just, sit. 

Scooby Doo sniffs the head for a moment before he looks over at you curiously. You don't trust yourself to speak. His head tilts and he pads over to you, nudging your arm with his wet cold nose and licking your ear when it doesn't trigger a response. You reach up to pet his ear absently, and he whimpers. 

You cry for exactly four minutes. Then you lean over the side of the truck and throw up. 

The latch that lets the back end of the pickup down is jammed, and it takes a few times before the trunk opens, and you punt the head out of the truck. Maggots fly everywhere. It's a beautiful sight to behold. You wipe the snot from your nose and grit your teeth, watching the heat rise on the horizon. It's calming in a dangerous way. It's strange to watch.

You look down at the dog and say, jinkies. He doesn't say anything back.


	3. Jade

You're somewhere near- Cushing? Is that the place? When you pull the car over, finally, and cut off the engine. The whole world goes back to the way it came: dead quiet.

  
    Your name is Jade Harley and you've been flirting with the end of the line for around four days now. Your mouth is dry and chapped and the tape player has rewound itself a long time ago; 'Track One' is blinking almost aggressively up at you from the tiny green strip of the radio. The car is stuffy with fat wads of heat, and your hands are gripping the steering wheel like it could hold you afloat in the middle of the desert. Instinctively, you turn to the passenger seat, but it's a motion that leaves a sharp pain in your gut and you stifle it. He's gone, Jade. Shhh.

  
    You feel like you've got one foot hovering over the edge, staring down into something that is threatening to swallow you- something crushing, something dark. There isn't time to be poetic about it, because it makes you too afraid to think about, and that's something that took time to admit to yourself. You're afraid. That's just the way it is. You squeeze your eyes shut.

  
    Alright, Jade. You're out of gas.

  
    You get out of the car. You snatch the map from the front pull your bag out of the back seat, some things from a time you can't really recall with clarity- a place with deep dish pizza, airplanes, beds with white sheets, a BioMed building, school and governments, washing machines-

  
    You leave the dog food in the trunk.

  
    You walk.

  
    What were you thinking of, before you pulled over? The asphalt is pitch black. You can feel the heat through the soles of your boots. Your shitty shades aren't dark enough to block it out. That makes sense, right? It's too hot. Too hot.

  
    You have daydreams where your hair is long again, stuck up in a perfect ponytail, and you cannonball into a body of water with your bikini on. Only, once you feel the last part of your head being engulfed under, you realize it's not water; but wet cement. You needed to imagine something thick, heavy, it would bear weight down on you because you weren't looking to surface again, to feel your body float to the top. What you were searching for was a burial, more of a tomb, and to remain unto this concrete catacomb until only the shape of your arms wrapped securely around your shins, your ponytail perpetually floating up like a telegraph line to the weightlessness of above ground, were left to be discovered.

  
    You dreamed of sleep that would not leave you restless in the morning. You dreamed of a place where you could lay yourself down and decide that you would be okay if your body were to make an imprint there forever.     

  
    The roof of your mouth is sticky. It's too hot. For a while, you try to think about nothing.

  
    There aren't going to be any infected around. This whole area- anything beyond Oklahoma city, you're thinking Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma. They firebombed major areas until the ash clogged up the air, thick billows of smoke rising from falling buildings, dissipating to the ground like collapsing lungs. You remember watching it on the television, days before there wasn't much of anything on the television at all. She'd gripped your hands until her knuckles were white. The standby signal was your lullaby until you left; you could still hear it in your sleep. They cleaned up the south like locusts. It wasn't fucked up and trashed, it was mostly empty because there weren't many people down here even before the infected were a reality, and you don't know which one you'd prefer, to be honest. They'd evac'd everywhere, though, long before the virus started turning anyone to- (throats ripped out, gurgling up blood and clawing at the door, your hands shook and you'd sat and screamed until your throat went raw because they didn't hear you, they smelled and heard your pumping blood, your pulse through the walls, Bec, anyone, _anyone, help, help!!!!_ )

  
    Jade Harley, that isn't nothing, you think.

  
    "Can you believe this, Bec?," You say, and your own voice startles you. Your tongue is thick and heavy, but you don't reach for your water. The urge to laugh is rising in your chest, and it doesn't scare you as much as it should. "Can you believe this?"

  
    You wait for his bark in response. It doesn't come.

 

 

 

  
  
    Here is a list of things that you miss the most about life before the virus, and everything after: Your bass guitar, Oreos, public libraries, getting to class early, the planetarium, taking the tram, laundry when it comes out of the dryer, singing with other people. Oreos was kind of a big one. You'd gone 13 years without them, it's kind of unfair that you had to say goodbye to them so quickly.

  
    You got to wake up every morning at University and say to yourself, this is the first day of the rest of my life, and it's going to be _great_.

  
    Your red trainers, jumping in a swimming pool, Halloween and Christmas, and the movie theater.

  
    ' _I don't want to die_ '. The thought is quiet, and it comes out of nowhere. You're a walking target with a dead canine phantom limb. It's existence in the back of your head makes you want to scream and hold your head so tightly, like if you didn't it would split in two. In school, when you first came to America, they used to call you a fobby jungle freak. They pulled at your long dark hair, and made fun of the way you spoke. They stuck signs to your desk that said, 'Don't feed it'. Don't feed it. Back then, you didn't wish you were dead. You wished everyone else was. You got suspended form school three different times for attacking other students. One time, you broke the wrist of a girl in your calculus class for saying that you had the same diseases that wild dogs had, and that's why you should've been allowed in school. But you were. That was the only thing you were allowed to spend Grandpa's money on, until you could inherit the rest of it when you were 18. You loved to learn, but you hated school. You loved to see so many people in one place like you hadn't before, but at the same time, you wished horrible things would happen to all of them. You weren't the wild dogs. They were. You were confused.

  
    It wasn't your fault. You think you did pretty well off for someone who had learnt how to talk mostly from a computer.

  
    Nail polish and the zoo. Aquariums. Hot water and sun tan lotion. Lattes in the morning. Fresh fruit. Good music. You realize with a pang you'd left the mix tapes in the car, and breathe slowly, in and out.

  
    When the sun starts to lower to the horizon, you're fairly certain that you've got sunstroke. There's a film of dust over every inch of you, including the inside of your mouth, and the corners of your cheeks between where your shades end and the handkerchief over your mouth begins are on fire with sunburn. When it gets dark, your teeth begin to chatter with the chill that comes with the night, and you can barely see where you're going. Terror grips your gut as the sky turns black- night used to mean something else, in another lifetime, but the night you know now has trained you to know better. There is no safety in the dark. Your goosebumps aren't going away, and they're not just from the cold.

  
    Your hands are shaking when you stop walking, and only your ragged breathing breaks the silence of the desert. You have to stop yourself from screaming when you peel your backpack off of your back, straps scraping over the flaming red of your sunburn. You unzip the bag, and pull your ragged sweatshirt out with a bottle of water. You spend around ten minutes cursing yourself for being stupid enough to go without drinking any or it all day, and take slow, deliberate sips from the bottle. When you're done with it, you place it inside of your bag. You don't feel like eating; you already have the urge to throw up what you ate this morning all over the asphalt. If the world was any kind of merciful, you'd puke all your guts out as well. Your spleen and your lower intestine and your liver, your heart and your lungs, laid out on the pavement like an inventory, Jade Harley, the Inside-Out Girl-

  
    You cut the line of thought off sharply, and tumble off the side of the road to the fence a few feet off, huddling up against a tree. You curl into yourself, and for a moment, you allow everything to be swallowed in your fear. It washes over you like a thick wave of crude oil, and it's suffocating. You squeeze your eyes shut, and then shut all of your emotions off like a faucet. Sleep comes to you like you're more dead than alive.

 

 

 

 

 

  
  
    "Jade, wake up."

  
    No. You're tired. This is entirely not what your alarm sounds like.

  
    "Jade! Get up! The landlord left. He was on his way out the door when - Jade, it spread. It's worse." 

     
    You open your eyes.  
    "Rose…" You murmur, and turn your head. The kinks in your neck groan in protest, and you dig the heels of your palms into your eyes. Someone's clambering about in the kitchen, and you squint your eyes until the stars fade and you see, fumbling about frantically through the doorway-

  
    "Rose," You say again, and smile. You peel yourself off of the bed and pull the sheets up to your collarbones, rising from the mattress like a mummy and leaving Bec behind in the bed, wrapped up in your comforter like a burrito. The bed head you're sporting is a monster to be reckoned with, and it makes a glossy halo around the crown of your head. Bare feet make no noise as you pad into the kitchen behind the blonde moving like a whirlwind, opening all of the drawers to search for you don't know what. For a minute, you watch her from the doorway, leaning against the frame with the sheets wrapped around you. It takes you a second to catch up to her, and when you do, you reach out to touch her wrist as she passes. It doesn't stop her, but she slows until she's facing away from you, looking out the window with her hands on the counter. She doesn't want you to see her so worried. It's quiet for a moment before you make your way over to her and wrap your arms around her waist from behind, wrapping the two of you in the sheet. Rose gives a sigh, and the sounds is small and heavy. You press your lips to the crook of her neck, and trail soft kisses up to her ear.

  
    "Morning," You murmur, voice laced with sleep.

  
    "It's in Mexico now," She says, and her voice is even. You hum darkly. "Jade, they think it's airborne. Those borders were closed off like the Berlin Wall, and it's still spreading."

  
    It's your turn to sigh. Your forehead thumps on her shoulder, and even though you still can't see her face, you can somehow feel that she's smiling, still.

  
    "I forgot to say- good morning to you too," And her voice is quiet.

  
    "Have you gone over to the Biomed building yet?" You ask, and uncurl yourself from her waist, letting the sheet fall to the ground around you. There isn't a lot of food in the flat- you haven't had time to get over to the store lately for groceries. The list on your fridge is so jammed it's not even worth looking at anymore, but you've got coffee in excess in the cupboards, so you pull out the tin and plug in the machine. You can feel Rose staring at your back, but you pour the grounds into the filter calmly and reach to go fill the pot.

  
    "No. I came over here first. I wanted you to know… and I wanted to ask…" Your hand stills as you turn off the sink. The flat's quiet. "Jade," She says, and her voice has an edge of seriousness that's been lacking since she walked in. "Jade, we need to get out of here."

  
    "You know I can't do that," You respond tiredly, and flip the switch. The coffee machine hums.

  
    "Jade, you and I both know that the US isn't safe anymore. It's not just the disease- Lord knows how fast it's going to spread, if it's airborne now, but the- the government- Jade, I'm genuinely worried for our safety. I'm worried for you."

  
    You run your fingers through your hair, thick black tangles, and stare at the ceiling. _Rose_.

  
    "No one's died of it yet, though," And your voice is hard. You know that it's a low blow, and it irritates her more than ever.

  
    "That doesn't-" She starts. You turn around.

  
    "Let's make a deal. Someone croaks of this thing- whatever this thing is- we'll leave. I'll leave with you, okay?" Rose draws her lips into a thin line. Her hands are pulled back to grip the countertop, but she says nothing.

  
    "You are so stubborn," She says quietly, exasperated, and shakes her head. Her blonde bob frames her face, and you smile.

  
    "Your hair's getting longer," You comment, and smile. "I like it. It looks nice."

  
    Rose studies you for a moment. She grabs her keys from off of the counter.

  
    "I have to get to class. I'll see you tonight." Her eyes don't meet yours.

  
    "Rose-" You start, and she stops in the doorway.

  
    "Things are going to be okay," You assure her. "I've got a plan. Everything is going to be-"

 

 

 

 

  
      
    You wake up screaming.

  
    You bite your lip so hard it breaks skin, blood filling your mouth and soaking it red. Hysterical tears spring to your eyes, but you blink them away, swallowing the lump in your throat. The sun is hot on your face. It must be later in the afternoon. You feel like shit, and you can't breathe. Yanking your backpack open, you grab for another water bottle and drain the entire thing in a minute. Your muscles scream in protest- you miss beds, beds were important- and attempt to climb off of the ground before you fall over, biting into the dust something terrible and slamming your cheek on the ground. Your leg had fallen asleep. The pins and needles are almost worst than the dirt you spit on to the ground next to your face.

  
    Cicadas buzz in the distance, and you want to scream.  
    When you roll over on to your back, you forget your sunburn. The hiss that escapes you is nauseating. Crawling back under the tree is degrading, but your leg is still on fire as it regains feeling, and you drag it like dead weight until you're sitting semi-comfortably in the dirt. You pull out the health bars from the last gas station raid, and force yourself to eat 2 of them, with the distinct knowledge that they're probably going to end up being upchucked on to the concrete in a few hours anyway. You're some kind of sick, but you don't like to think about it.

  
    You walk with the map burning a hole in your pocket, and this time, you pull the gun out of your bag to hold like a security blanket.

  
    It's a half an hour before you hit the lake.

  
    It's a bit off the road, but when you see it your mouth goes (remarkably) dryer than you already thought it was. There's a collective of trees off the side of it that turns to thick brush as it goes on, and a downed tree that looks like its branches are trying to climb into the water resides solidly by the lake. It's massive. Your name is Jade Harley, and you're an excellent swimmer. You were the best in your high school, but you never joined swim team, because like you told her, "Swim caps are really, really dumb. No one can tame the beast!!!" You'd shook your long mass of black hair like a dark hurricane, and she'd laughed like wind chimes caught in a storm.

(You get scared sometimes. You think maybe you're remembering her wrong.)

Stumbling off the side of the road, you toss your bag and gun to the ground with the safety on and start to gingerly peel your clothes off until you're standing by the edge holding your naked chest in only your underwear. You can soak your clothes later, but right now, you just want to jump in. The lake looks calm, and for a moment, you're almost afraid to touch it. Your toes curl into the hot dirt on the edge, and for some reason, you feel naked like you haven't before.

  
    You don't jump. You wade in until you can swim, and then dunk your head.

  
    The water is far from clear, but it's a semblance of cold, and you feel laughter rising in your chest. When you break the surface, the clear blue sky greets you, and your wet hair drags behind you like a veil. It's quiet, save for the mumbling of the ripples you create in the water. The cool temperature of the lake soothes your sunburn, and for a moment, everything is a little less worse. You dip your nose below the water, and close your eyes to float there, shadowed by the downed tree.

  
     _What am I even… doing here._

  
    You think back to the map in your bag, and your brow furrows.

  
     _She would hate this._

  
 _So what's even… the point?_  
  
  
    "Okay," You hear, "This one is new."

  
    Water fills your lungs as you gasp, and it's a burning sensation that makes you want to tug your hair and scream, but you can't cough or wheeze or make any noise. You don't see anything, but the voice comes again over the water, and you want to sob and choke and do something, because that's what it sounds like, you'd forgotten. Months and months by yourself, but that's what it sounds like, a voice that isn't yours-  
  
    Not yet. Not yet. Not yet, Jade.  
  
    "Got a nine to five, take the 95  
    cut the brakes on the four wheel drive  
    just to feel alive,  
    bees in the vents so i set fire to the hive,  
    when I arrive,  
    so much vibe,  
    need an external drive to contain my jive,  
    revivin' the contrived, survivn' the nose dive,  
    this was a test drive, so everyone  
    feel free to take five."  
      
    It's… it's the shittiest rap you've ever heard. You could cry. You're crying right now. You have never felt more embarrassed in your entire life, and you once took off your shirt in class because it was too hot and you didn't realize that it wasn't appropriate to strip down in a room of people because the heat was on too high. You hadn't been wearing a bra, either, and miraculously, this is still worse.  
  
    "Whaddya think, Toto? Any good, or back to the drawing board? Keep in mind, Tyler the Creator is in Chicago somewhere trying to hold in his spleen with his hands and puking blood, so even in you don't like it, there's nothing like it anymore."  
  
    Toto? Was there another person there? Toto is a name from a film, you remember that. A dog's name? Your lungs are still burning. It's taking all of the pressure you have built up inside of you not to cough up the water, and your eyes are starting to sting with the start of tears. Adrenaline is racing through the tips of your fingertips like wildfire, or molly. The voice comes again. It's deeper- a boy's voice. You don't cough. Water drips down your legs as you pull yourself out of the lake.  
  
    "Wow, harsh words from the peanut gallery. You gonna jump in or stand at the edge like a pussy?" There's a pause. You're picking up your gun.  
  
    "Fido picks door number two. An unwise choice. We've been parading through the desert for 6 fucking days and we get to a goddamn oasis and all you wanna do is sniff it. Un-fucking-believable. I am not made of bottled water, flea hotel. Hey- where do you think you're going?" He calls. You round the downed tree with careful steps to greet the origin of the voice, gun pointed steadily out in front of you as you walk towards- It's a shock of white blonde hair and a dirty red shirt, and what you think might be the last pair of red converse that someone alive is wearing on earth. His back faces you like a target, and from the way he's still looking off into the woods (At what? Someone else?), he hasn't heard you approaching yet.  
  
     _This_ , you think as your head swims, _is so unfair_.  
  
    He looks so _real_.  
  
    And nothing like something you think you would imagine, either- you'd dreamed of her, of your Grandpa, even that angry kid in your old O-Chem class, but you'd never hallucinated someone you'd never seen before. This is so unfair. He looks so real, you could reach out and touch him. This is so unfair. This is so…  
  
     You think he hears the click of you pushing the safety off, because his whole back goes rigid with tension and you feel like you're going to throw up.  
      
    You cough, hard and loud. Relief floods through your veins, and you spit to the side and grit your teeth.  
  
    "Put your hands," You rasp, "Above your head."  
      
    He jumps at your voice, and starts to turn slowly around. You can see his hands shaking. It's a nice juxtaposition to your own. Oddly enough, this is the steadiest you've held your shotgun in months.  
      
    " _Don't_ -" You start, and hold the gun tighter, raising it slightly. "I didn't say turn around."  
  
    "Um," He says smartly, and your breath hitches in your throat tightly. When your voice rings out, you sound near hysterical.  
  
    "I didn't say talk, either."  
  
    You hear the wet clap of his mouth shutting. You take your time- a few deep breaths, shuddering quietly. There is no wind. Slowly, his hands raise up to the side of his head. When you talk, you have to force yourself to keep your voice steady. You feel 16 again. It's draining.  
  
    "Why are you doing this to me?" You say, and your voice is barely above a whisper.  
      
    "What-"  
  
    "I didn't-!" You say harshly, louder. You don't know why you're not just shooting him in the head. You don't want to see his face (It's face). You breath again. Your lungs still burn. His hands are still shaking. A rapping hallucination, capable of fear. You've really lost it. Maybe this is it. This is The End. You are shockingly not worried at all.  
  
    "Why can't you just let me have some peace," You whisper. "I lost Bec- I lost everything- isn't that enough? Can't that be it for you? Does this-" You wave your gun around madly, "-really mean anything anymore? You did it, okay? You _win_."  
  
    The silence is deafening. Your hallucination speaks.  
  
    "Are you gonna shoot me?" It asks. It doesn't sound tired. It sounds genuinely concerned.  
  
    "Probably."  
  
    "Oh." There's a long pause. "Hey, listen- I mean, not that I haven't got any objections to being shot in the back by some faceless Girl Interrupted, but could you do me this huge favor and take care of my dog after you kill me?"  
  
     _…What?_  
      
    When he turns his head to the side, his eyes are wide with fear, but his voice remains steady, if not quieter. He must be looking at you in the corner of his eye. You become distinctly aware that you're not wearing a shirt, or a bra. There's a worried smile plastered across his face, and he doesn't hesitate when he says, "So, are you gonna shoot me now or later, Laura Croft? Because if you decide you ain't trigger happy, maybe we could talk about this a bit."  
  
   _Oh my God._  
  
    That's when you hear the bark.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the kudos and the kind words everyone!! You're all too sweet. Thanks for reading! PS I'm sorry if you don't ship Rose Jade it just sort of snuck its way in there hahaha gomen


	4. Dave

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the need to write this fic comes and goes im not kidding homestuck will be over by the time i finish hahaahaha  
> this chapter is rated wet dream for dave is a teenage boy with hormones

What you learn later is, Jade is a tragedy and and a half with a laugh like a funeral bell. When she looks at you, really, for the first time, as not a fucked up mirage of heat stroke, there's something about the way she stares at you that makes you want to be better than you really are. They were eyes that looked for something miraculous. Helicopters coming over the horizon, a radio signal in the middle of the desert. You felt like a pariah who'd walked into a church and called himself a savior. You know now, she hadn't wanted a miracle, but it was all the same. You weren't a cure, or a government with a leg to stand on. You were just some fuck-up dragging a sword around. It made you want to apologize, so you do.

"Sorry," You say, and she recovers quickly, raising her arm where she had dropped it in shock. There's still a gun to your head, and Fluffy's barking and wagging his tail and prancing around like goddamn Bambi, it's almost embarrassing, all of it. If you're not kidding yourself, she's shaking now like she wasn't before. You think she might be crying.

"You're- You found-," Like she can't decide what to ask first. You don't know what to say.

"I could still shoot you!" She says says, recovering, abut there's something plainer about her voice. You raise your eyebrows at her, but you don't turn around, because now you're fairly certain about something else. You can feel the hint of heat rising to your cheeks, and you pointedly look at the ground. Come on. It's been a pretty long time since you've seen a girl, and you're pretty sure you can triple that time for a topless one. Her words register after a moment. 

"You're gonna shoot the only person with a pulse in a fucking hundred mile radius? Really?"

"A hundred and seventeen." That catches you.

"What?"

"I've driven a hundred and seventeen in the past couple of days. There isn't anyone else. There's no one."

It's quiet. Cicadas pulse in the trees and the grass. The dog barks again, and you'd round on him if you thought things wouldn't go to shit if you did.

Out of the corner of your eye, you watch her lower her arm. You think she's waiting for you to turn around, so you clear your throat and look up at the tree tops. It takes her a full three confusing seconds to realize, and when she does, her arms fly up to her chest, and she scoffs.

"I- you- stay here!" She squeaks angrily, and she disappears out of your peripheral vision.

It occurs to you to get the fuck out of dodge. A few seconds ago this chick was about to play target practice with the back of your head. You think it might be the way she looked at you that made you stay. You're not sure. There was something about it, in a way that was heavy and important. You can't place your finger on it, but it lingers like a weight in your chest for a few seconds before you hear a rustling behind you and she comes bounding back over the downed tree, and you turn around, and really get a look at her.

She's choking up tears like she's trying not to and failing miserably, and it is maybe the most awkward thing you've had to deal with in the past year of your life, and God, why didn't she shoot you when she could have, that would have been worlds easier to deal with than… this. Her black hair hangs down over her face like damp monster, and her clothes are completely soaked. When she cries, her sunburnt shoulders shake, and there's nothing you can think to say. 

"I'm sorry," She sobs into Marmaduke's fur. "I'm so, so sorry. I'm so sorry I lost you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She's heaving uncontrollably, there's snot and sweat and tears pouring down her face and it's like she hasn't cried since the day she was born. You're afraid you've broken something in her, and for some reason your brain grabs on to the image of your own Mom crying in her hospital bed. That time, and here, with this girl- they're crying the same way. Like there's no hope left for them. Like they've seen the end and the end looks ugly. It makes your gut twist and prompts you to hustle over to her. She doesn't flinch, not like before. Beethoven is nuzzling his snout into her hand like she's been hoarding Scooby Snacks.

"I promise, I'll never leave you again. You stay by my side from now on, Okay?" The dog whimpers in response.

Oh. Oh. 

It takes you a minute to remember that this was the girl who was, as of a few minutes ago, about to shoot you in the head point blank with a look in her eyes like industrial death. 

"Whoa, hey- he's a dog, not a bowl of onions, stop the waterworks for a second, and we can…" But you don't even have it in you to act like you know what you're dealing with. Your voice trails off and it's lost to the sound of her crying, pulling her knees up to her chest to hug her suborned thighs. This is a level of venerability you haven't dealt with since Mom. Mom, pre-cancer. So you scoot up next to her, knees bent up to your own chest. "Hey," You murmur, staring at her evenly. "Take a deep breath, okay? You keep crying like that, you're gonna tire yourself out real soon. You need water, and it's not gonna work if you're crying it all out like that."

"Don't tell me what to do," She'd choked, and you'd blushed pink.

"I didn't mean," You start, and she lets out a shudder that shakes her whole body. It's only on instinct that you reach out to touch her shoulder, to help her, maybe, because she looked like that's what she needed. You're a little bit of a sucker like that.

You suppose that it was only her instinct as well, too, to yank away from you and swing out her fist to your face.

 

When you walk back to where you'd parked the truck, she follows you after a minute. Your nose is pouring out blood like a faucet and if you didn't know any better, you'd think that she'd broken it. When you look at it in the side mirror, though, nothing's crooked. The first girl you've met in months, and she can't get it out of her to try and kill you. You aren't sure why you'd expected otherwise. You pull the handkerchief out from your back pocket and start assessing the damage.  
She scares the shit out of you when she creeps up behind you. Scrappy- Bec- is at her heels like a procession. You want to kick him.

"I'm… I'm sorry," She says quietly. Her eyes are rimmed red, and her voice is rough. "I'm really sorry for hitting you."

You don't know what to say. No one has ever apologized for punching you before. You figured you just always deserved it. You say, "Yeah," like a total tool, and turn back to the mirror. 

"I wanted to… to say thanks for taking care of Bec. He probably would have… died, if you hadn't taken care of him. He would have died." Your eyes are downcast to the ground. Your nose is still pounding with a dull pain.

"Here," she says, and steps forward, taking the handkerchief from your hand. Your knuckles burn when her fingers brush against them, and you bite your cheek. 

"You don't have to-" You start, but she's tilting your face towards her, dabbing at the blood at the corner of your mouth. Here, closer, you can see her eyes better, and you realize with a start that what you had mistaken for hatred earlier was something else- determination. You knew, then. You knew what it was like to hate yourself because you still had hope.

" 'S your name," She murmured, and there's a pink tint that rises to your cheeks that you really wish wouldn't. You try not to think about her naked chest, standing behind you in her underwear. God, you are such a creep.

"Dave," You answer. "Dave Strider." She nods like she's processing it. She's too close, and your eyes are trying to find any other place to look, it's those green eyes-

"Where're you from?" You pull your lip down and narrow your eyes.

"What is this, the spanish inquisition?" She smiles a little, and it makes your stomach jump.

"Yeah, maybe." Pauses. "I'm not Spanish, though. I'm from the Pacific Ring."

"Felicidades. What the hell are you doing in Oaklahoma?" Her hand freezes against your face, and you wish you hadn't asked, because you're both sort of dancing around the subject and it's the fucking dumbest thing ever but you don't want to get into it. There's something nice abut not having to talk about it- any of it. Maybe it's normal, for now. Maybe you're both okay.

It's surprisingly easy, being this stupid.

"Do you have any food?" She asks instead, staring up at you. 

"Like a king," You respond. She cracks a smile, and her lip starts to bleed. 

 

It takes her 10 minutes to go through 2 and a half cans of ravioli, and you don't stop staring at her for a second of it. Bec, the mangy mutt, has placed his loyalties elsewhere, and curls up next to Jade, panting so hard you have to remind yourself to fish out some water bottles before you hit the road again. It's awkward, sitting there with her in the back of the truck, but you can't find it in yourself to stop staring at her. You forget how noisy other people were, how vivid everything was when you were watching someone else move. You wonder idly if she's going through the same motions you are, now, watching what you look like sitting opposite from her (you don't want to think about what you look like, it's been more than a hot second since you've had anything close to a shower, and even when you did you were interrupted by a girl threatening to shoot you point blank in the back of your head. You probably smell like B.O. in a grease trap.)

"S-so," You mumble slowly, watching her wolf down the contents of the can, "Where're you headed?"

She slows when you speak, taking a little more time to chew and turning her head to look over her shoulder. You know, it's compulsive, and you have to stop yourself from turning to look too.

"California." She says warily, and looks back to your with curious eyes. "Los Angeles." 

The dead quiet of the desert is overwhelming, and it's starting to get dark. You really need to get to the next major city in the next 2 days or less, because you're running out of supplies and even though you can't stand to think about just how horrible it's going to be, trying to get supplies from an urban shithole infested with infected out of the fucking wazoo, you need a whole fuckload of stuff on the double. And so does this girl. You go down a checklist in your head, watching her sunburned skin and her skinny arms. You need- aloe, and probably medicine, dog food, all the water you can find, 'cause this desert is eating your throat alive-

She's staring at you, and it takes you a second to realize she'd asked you a question.

"Yeah?" You say, and she smiles a little. Something in your stomach melts. 

"I said, how 'bout you? Anywhere special?" 

Your brother's face sears through your mind like a migraine, and where your gut felt light seconds before, it's suddenly filled with lead. 

'We're going straight up to Montreal,' He'd said, and stared up off to the sky like he could see exactly where they were headed. It was like that before you hit Freedom. He'd given you a gun and said, 'They're not people anymore. You know better than I do, some of them never even were.' 

'They're sick,' You'd begged, looking down at the shotgun. 'Dirk, we can't-'

He'd glared down at you with something in his eyes that'd scared you. It made you shut up. It made you shoot them, in the beginning.

'I'm not going down without a fight,' He'd said.

She was still staring at you.

"I was," you say, after a minute. "But now I… now, not so much." She nods, and you look over at her.

"Were you really gonna shoot me?" You ask, because it's something you've been wondering since she'd lowered the gun from your head. It's the wrong question to ask, because she doesn't answer. She turns her head to look over her shoulder for a third time. 

"You don't have to keep doing that, you know."

It catches her by surprise. She turns to face you with nothing short of mild shock written on her face.

"They're not gonna show up here… they get slower when it gets dark. I think- something about the sunlight-"

"Dave," She says, and fuck, hearing your name hurts in the best kind of way. You go quiet because you can't think of what to say. You don't like looking her in the eyes; there's something raw there that gives you goosebumps and vaguely reminds you of your brother. He used to look at you the same way, like you didn't know what you were doing, and it was your own fault for it. 

"I meant what I said," She says, interrupting your train of thought.. "Before. There isn't anyone. I've been- it's been a long time, since I started, and there really isn't anyone else. So I guess, what I'm asking is- I mean, you're making fires at night?? You've got a truck with a front seat full of stuff that wasn't made to last a long time."

"Yeah?" You say, quirking an eyebrow. Her expression is less than amused.

"What I'm trying to say is- honestly, how are you alive right now?? You've got the survival skills of…" When she trails off, you lean forward. Her gaze snaps back to you like a magnet.

"I can't- that thing you do, where you allude to other- I'm not good at it," She tries to explain, and you quirk your eyebrow at her. 

"You should be dead," She says, trying to gain her ground again, and it makes your stomach drop. "Really, I'm not saying this to hurt you- you should very truly be dead. You're not careful. I've known you a few hours, and I know- you're not careful."

"Lassie helped," You shrug, and something must've gotten through to the damn thing, because Bec lifts his head like you've offered something nice, and stops panting for a moment when he looks at you. You roll your eyes, but she doesn't notice. She's still staring at you.

"Dumb luck?" You try, and her gaze is weary. Even you don't fully believe the lie, and that's supposed to be one of the few things you're good at.

"Thanks for the faith," You say, and you go to finish the sentiment with her name when you stop. 

You don't know it. 

"You're…" You try, but she's laying down against the back of the truck against the dog, burrowing her cheek into his fur and closing her eyes.

"You're right. They are slower at night. We should be safe."

When you shift your weight, the truck creaks.

"I'll keep watch," You say, crossing your arms to try and keep out the cold, but you don't think she's listening anymore.

You fall asleep anyway.

 

 

In your dream, she's leaning over you on all fours, and you know her name.

"Dave," She breathes out through round, red, wet lips, and you feel your dick twitch. Her top is gone again, and she's soaking wet like she was when you first saw her, wild black curls hanging down over her shoulder and falling like a curtain next to your face. Her chest is pressed up against yours, and you can't breathe.

"F-" You start to say, but she grinds her hips up against yours, and you want to die it's so good.

"Dave," She says again, "You should wake up now." She breathes hotly into your ear, and your hands are on her hips, pulling her up against you.

"What?" You ask, and you feel her smile against your neck.

"Really," She says, "You should really wake up now."

"Oh," you say, and when she rolls her hips again, you're gone.

 

 

It's only when you open your eyes do you smell the blood.

**Author's Note:**

> All of the cities in here are factual, and Jade's route may fluctuate between major interstates because of certain cities or roadblocks, if you were wondering.


End file.
